The Statistics and Data Management Core-C provides to all Center investigators statistical consultation andcollaboration on experimental design, statistical modeling and data analyses, and statistical support forpreparing presentations and manuscripts. The Statistics and Data Management Core-C also maintains: (1)databases for the clinical, demographic and diagnostic data concerning psychiatric patients and controlsubjects for the Clinical Services and Diagnostics Core-B, as well as specific research data for Projects 4and Project 5; and (2) databases for the Brain Tissue Donation Program and for animal post-mortem tissuedata. In addition to these two major goals, the Statistics and Data Management Core-C develops novelstatistical methodology to support the Center's research goals. The Statistics and Data Management Core-C's personnel include: (1) two senior faculty from the University of Pittsburgh's Department of Statistics, bothof whom have substantial research experience in neurostatistics and statistical applications in psychiatry, aswell as extensive publications on statistical methods; (2) senior database administrators and support staffwith broad experience in managing databases for centers with many projects; and (3) Graduate StudentResearchers (advanced Ph.D. students in the Department of Statistics) who support detailed data analyses.The two major areas of neuroscience statistical research that the Statistics and Data Management Core-C ispursuing involve clustering technologies and adaptive designs specific to center studies. The overarchinggoal of the clustering research is to develop methods which use post-mortem tissue study results or PET,EEC and fMRI clinical study results to attempt to identify possible clusters of schizophrenia subjects, and tocharacterize these clusters. The goal of the adaptive designs research is to provide novel adaptive statisticaldesigns tailored for use in the Center's studies, including postmortem tissue studies, animal studies andclinical studies, with a purpose to increase design efficiency while maintaining design power. In summary,the Statistics and Data Management Core-C provides state-of-the-art statistical support to the Center'sresearch projects and maintains secure and accurate databases for these projects, and conducts statisticalresearch to identify biologically similar clusterings of schizophrenia and to develop new study designs whichmake more efficient use of resources.
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